F .T .C. Asks Rules to Curb Funeral Home Practices

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.
To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems.
Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

The regulations, following a two‐year investigation of the $2‐billion‐a‐year industry, were accompanied by an announcement of a consent order involving Service Corporation International, the nation's largest funeral‐service chain.

The consent order—in which a corporation does not acknowledge wrongdoing but agrees not to engage in specified conduct—requires the chain to reimburse any customers who may haye been overcharged for crematory services since 1971. The commission said this could amount to $100,000.

Among the 139 funeral homes operated by the chain and its subsidiaries in 16 states, the commission said; are Walter B.. Cooke, Inc., Riverside Memorial Chapel and Frank E. Canipbell in New York City and Joseph Gawler's Sons, Inc. in Washington, D.C.

Other funeral homes in the New York metropolitan area that are in the chain include the Abbey, Echevarria Sons and Universal in Manhattan; Meislohn, Inc., on Staten Island; Claude R. Boyd on Long Island; Geo. T. Davis in New Rochelle, Arthur K. Brown in Montclair and Verona, N. 3., and Newand and Whitney in East and West Hartford, Conn.

There are about 22,500 funeral establishments, employing about 45,000 persons, in the United States.

The. F.T.C. proposals include the following.

¶Prohibit undertakers from embalming corpses without the family's permission and from requiring embalming before cremation. Also prohibit “misrepresentations” of the need—legal or otherwise — for embalming, which adds to the cost of a funeral.

¶Require an establishment to display some of the least expensive of available coffins “in the same general manner as other caskets are displayed,” and order it to refrain from “disparaging the quality, appearance or tastefulness of any such merchandise?”

¶Require funeral homes to provide accurate price information by telephone and give each customer a detailed, dated price list for all coffins.

¶Require funeral homes to “display prominently” the‐price of each coffin and to make available an itemized price list for “funeral goods and services,” with a statement that the customer may choose only those items desired and would be billed only for those items.

State laws that forbid funeral homes to advertise prices would be pre‐empted by the rules, and efforts to hinder the operation of memorial societies of other groups designed to make possible inexpensive funerals would be defined as an “unfair or deceptive act.”

If the proposed rules are adopted, any violation could be punished by a fine of $10,000.

Their adoption must be preceded by a procees believed likely to last at least a year, involving the solicitation of comments from those interested, public hearings, and further review by the commission's staff and members.

Thomas H. Clark, general counsel for the National Funeral Directors Association, said that the funeral industry had had “no opportunity to provide input” in the drawing‐up of the proposed rule. He said that it would undoubtedly be discussed at the association's national convention in Miami Beach, Fla., in October, and that the group would then adopt a position with regard to the regulations.

The association's president, Edward J. Fitzgerald of Albuquerque, N. M., complained that the proposed trade rule had been “leaked to the presi and others” but not given to the trade group and that reports on the proposed rules appeared in advance in newspapers. He also aid that a set of proposed “guides” for funeral practices had been submitted to the F.T.C. in April, 1974. Mr. Fitzgerald, like Mr. Clark, questioned the commission's jurisdiction in this area.

J. Thomas Rosch, director of the F.T.C.'s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the commission's investigation had found that some of Service Corporation International's funeral homes were overcharging customers for such items as obituary notices, flowers and cremations that were furnished by a third party.

The consent order requires, that this practice be stopped and, in the case of the crematory fees, requires that all overcharges since January, 1971, be refunded. Mr. Rosch said that the average overcharge for cremation was found to be about $40, and in some cases, as much as $75.

Mr. Rosch, in a brief statement he read at this morning's announcement of the proposals, said:

“The funeral transaction is unique in its potential for consumer exploitation. Buyers are grief‐stricken and emotionally ill‐equipped to protect themselves.”

He said that the F.T.C. investigation had produced evidence of “a compelling need for consumer protection.

The “bait and switch” sales cited by the F.T.C. refer to the practice of agreeing to sell a customer a piece of merchandise and then substituting inferior goods or enticing a customer by an offer of a “bargain” and then inducing the customer to buy something more expensive.

Many of the abuses that the proposed rule is intended to correct were: brought to wide spread public attention by Jessica Mitford in her 1963 critique of the American funeral industry, The American Way of Death.” Mr. Rosch was asked today if he and his staff had been influenced by Miss Mitford's work.

“We've certainly all read the Mitford book,” he said with a smile.

In a 119‐page staff memorandum accompanying and supporting the proposed regulation, there is detailed discussion of practices considered to be exploitative or deceptive. These range from embalming without permission, to facilitate the sale of goods and services from silk‐lined coffins to burial clothing for “opencasket viewing,” to making a profit on “cash advances.”.

A version of this archives appears in print on August 29, 1975, on Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: F .T .C. Asks Rules to Curb Funeral Home Practices. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe